This invention is related to submarine vessels. In particular, it is a submarine with a cargo hold between buoyancy tanks and an on-board cargo-handling means.
Submarine technology has been limited mostly to military vessels, research vessels, marine oil-field vessels and some underwater pleasure craft. There has been relatively little development of cargo-submarine technology. However, with this invention, there are major cost, convenience, safety, cargo-handling, military and other advantages of cargo submarines over surface ships and boats of all sizes.
Examples of submarines designed for cargo transportation or having significant cargo capacity include the following U.S. patent documents.
______________________________________ U.S. Pat. No. Inventor Issue Date ______________________________________ 4,860,681 Svenning August 1989 4,153,001 Krasberg May 1979 3,903,825 Hamy September 1975 3,832,965 Walker September 1974 2,727,485 Combs December 1955 ______________________________________
The Svenning patent is a twin-hull oil-field submarine invented in Norway for servicing off-shore oil wells. It provides bottom hatches with specialized tools for positioning marine oil-filed equipment loaded from on-shore through a top hatch. It is limited to particular types of cargo configurations and cargo-handling tools make it unsuitable for general cargo in ways provided by this invention. The Krasberg device invented in Scotland is another form of off-shore oil-field submarine. It provides one pressurized tank for divers and one ambient-pressure tank for crew members. It is further limited to special pipe-handling equipment and tools for off-shore oil-field development and servicing. The Hamy patent describes a submarine cargo train, in which a tractor submarine is used to pull assemblies of submarine pressurized containers like an underwater barge train. Unlike the present invention, in Hamy cargo is not carried within a powered submarine and there is no on-board loading equipment. The Walker submarine, invented in Canada, for cutting through ice, is another type of submarine barge-like train. It was limited to a chassis suspended below an ice-cutting hull. The Combs patent, another barge-train submarine, describes a circular submarine body with oppositely-rotating screws at a pointed end, in which submarine barges are linked between one such pointed tractor pulling and another pushing submarine barge trains.